Voters Want Infrastructure Paid for by Corporate Tax Increases, Not the Gas Tax or Pandemic Funding
By Morgan Sperry and Ethan Winter
As part of a survey conducted in mid-June 2021, Invest in America and Data for Progress polled likely voters nationally to test for different ways to pay for investments in infrastructure.
We find that likely voters nationally would prefer to pay for new investments in infrastructure by increasing corporate taxes and closing loopholes so that corporations can’t deduct expenses incurred when they relocate jobs outside of the U.S. In addition, likely voters support increasing taxes on wealthy individuals. Both changing how corporations are taxed and increasing taxes on the wealthy are more popular than increasing the gas tax.
Furthermore, likely voters prefer changing how corporations are taxed to repurposing unspent pandemic relief funds. Moreover, they would rather see an infrastructure bill passed with only Democratic votes and paid for by changing how corporations are taxed than a bipartisan bill that funds new investments in infrastructure with unspent pandemic relief funds.
Voters want to pay for new investments in infrastructure by raising taxes on corporations and the wealthy, not by raising user fees or the gas tax.
We first asked likely voters about a series of ways that lawmakers in Congress are proposing paying for new investments in infrastructure. We find that, by a 58-percentage-point margin, likely voters support paying for new investments in infrastructure by making corporate taxes fairer. Likely voters also support increasing taxes on individuals who earn more than $1 million a year on income from stocks and bonds and on individuals who earn more than $400,000 a year, by margins of 45-points and 38-points, respectively. By contrast, likely voters overwhelmingly oppose increasing user fees (like highway tolls) or the gas tax in order to fund infrastructure investments — opposing each by margins of 40-points and 50-points, respectively.
A majority of all likely voters — including a majority of Independents — support paying for new investments in infrastructure by changing how corporations are taxed, rather than repurposing pandemic relief funds.
Next, we asked likely voters how they would rather pay for new investments in infrastructure: by making corporate taxes fairer, or repurposing unspent pandemic relief funds. By a 24-point margin, likely voters prefer raising corporate taxes to repurposing unspent pandemic relief money. This includes a majority of self-identified Democrats and Independent voters, who prefer the corporate tax increase as a pay-for by margins of 52-points and 29-points, respectively. Over a third of likely voters who self-identify as Republicans support making taxes on corporations more fair to pay for new infrastructure investments, while half of Republicans prefer repurposing unspent pandemic relief funds.
Likely voters would rather new infrastructure investments be passed along partisan lines and paid for by increasing taxes on corporations than pass a bipartisan bill that pays for investments with repurposed pandemic relief funds.
Finally, we asked likely voters what they would prefer: that new infrastructure investments be passed on a partisan basis (with only votes from Democrats in Congress) and paid for by making corporate taxes fairer, or on a bipartisan basis (with votes from Democrats and Republicans in Congress) and paid for by repurposing unspent pandemic relief funds. We find that by a 14-point margin, likely voters would prefer that new infrastructure investments be passed on a partisan basis and paid for by reforming the corporate tax code. Nearly two-thirds of Democrats, half of Independents, and close to a third of Republicans prefer the partisan, rather than bipartisan, approach outlined here.
Likely voters nationally would rather that new investments in infrastructure be paid for by changing how corporations are taxed and raising taxes on the wealthy, rather than implementing new user fees or raising the gas tax. Moreover, likely voters prefer taxing corporations more than repurposing unspent pandemic relief funds. Finally, likely voters back a partisan infrastructure bill, paid for by reforming the corporate tax code, over a bipartisan bill paid for using pandemic relief funds.
Toplines for this polling can be found here.
Methodology
From June 11 to 15, 2021, Data for Progress conducted a survey of 1,479 likely voters nationally using web panel respondents. The sample was weighted to be representative of likely voters by age, gender, education, race, and voting history. The survey was conducted in English. The margin of error is ±3 percentage points.
Morgan Sperry (@MorganRSperry) is an analyst at Data for Progress.
Ethan Winter (@EthanBWinter) is a senior analyst at Data for Progress. You can email him at ethan@dataforprogress.org.